Cookies
by PurpleHipposRock
Summary: When sleeplessness strikes, what can you do when stuck thirty thousand feet up in the air? Bake, of course. Bonding between our favourite SO and trainee. Skyward, fluffy.


Cookies

**A sort of WHN for "Eye Spy" (1x04). And a little bit Skyward. **

**I don't own Marvel, therefore I do not own Agents of SHIELD. Sigh.**

Ward rolled out of bed with a sigh. Reading wasn't tiring him out, nor was finishing his mission reports or even just watching TV. Maybe going a few rounds with the heavy bag would succeed in tiring him out.

He checked the clock. It was bright outside, but according to the clock, which he hadn't reset to the current time zone, it was almost three o'clock at night. These changing time zones sucked.

At least they were going back to the helicarrier, now, and Coulson had said, barring a giant emergency, they were going to stay there for a few days.

Maybe he'd get some sleep there.

He sighed, pulled on a dark grey hoodie with the SHIELD emblem on it and stood up, picking up the bandages he used to strap his hands to stop getting too badly hurt when he punched a wee bit too hard. He knew that tiring himself out worked – the first day he trained Skye, he'd collapsed after dinner and slept for a full eight hours; it'd been months since he'd last slept a full eight hours in one go. Skye was… definitely a handful.

He hit the touchpad that opened the door, which slid silently open to allow the tempting scent of baking goodies to waft into his bunk and be smelt by his nose.

Someone was baking?

He padded quietly into the living area, where the sight of Skye dancing in the kitchen, the earbuds of her iPod stuck in her ears while she stood with her back to him, mixing something in a bowl, made him smile. The pure innocence of her, wiggling to the beat of whatever she was listening to, humming and stirring what looked like cookie dough, now that he was closer and could see.

Now he was right behind her, and he could see the cake rising in the oven, and the tray of what looked like blueberry muffins waiting to go in after it. The cookie dough had chocolate chips in it, and as he watched, she stuck her pinkie in and tasted it. He could hear the heavy beat of her music, some popular tune that he probably didn't know. He stuck to what he liked, and rarely varied. Skye's long hair was tied up in a messy bun, leaving the nape of her neck bare. He grinned and breathed lightly on the bare skin of her neck.

She jumped and spun, yanking the earbuds out of her ears and staring at him.

'Sneaking up on people isn't nice, Ward!' she hissed, and promptly punched him in the arm with the hand that wasn't cradling cookie dough.

'You need to work on your situational awareness,' Ward said with a teasing grin.

'I don't expect to be snuck up on at…' Skye checked the clock. 'Three a.m. What are you doing up?'

'What are _you_ doing up?' Ward asked.

'I asked first,' Skye said.

'Are we really gonna play that game?' Ward asked.

'You started it,' Skye said, narrowing her eyes at him.

'I can't sleep,' he said, holding up the black bandages that he used to strap his hands. 'Was gonna go down and work out with the heavy bag. What are you doing?'

'I couldn't sleep either, and I used to love baking. I couldn't do much when I was in the van, but I used to, in St. Agnes'.' There was a muted ding, and she brightened. 'The cake's done.' She sidled out from in front of him, and opened the oven. The scent of fresh baked chocolate cake filled their air, and he sniffed appreciatively.

'Reminds me of when my mom baked,' Ward said, smiling and leaning against the bench. 'Whenever one of us did well in a test, or sport… she'd bake a cake to celebrate.'

'Well, we did well today,' Skye said cheerfully. 'Are you just gonna hang out here, or are you actually going to go work out?' She put the muffins in the oven.

He considered it for a moment. 'Eh. Sitting here watching you make cake is probably preferable to bruising my knuckles on the punching bag.'

Skye nodded. 'Well, if you're gonna hang out here, you may as well help me out here. Grab the milk out of the fridge, will you?'

'Why can't you sleep?' Ward asked, doing as she asked.

'Adrenaline,' she admitted, turning the cake out onto a plate. 'Do you ever get used to it?'

He shook his head. 'Nah. Sucks, sometimes, but sometimes adrenaline is the only reason I've survived certain missions.'

'I guess being rammed into is more adrenaline than I'm used to,' she said sheepishly.

'You don't get used to it,' he said.

She rolled her eyes. 'Gee, thanks. Two glasses.'

He reached up to the top shelf that she couldn't get to and grabbed two.

'What about you?' she asked. 'Why can't you sleep?'

He chuckled, and poured two glasses of milk. 'I don't sleep very much, anymore. Four or five hours a night is good, for me.'

'Why?' she asked.

'Adrenaline. I got eight hours, the other night. Training you tired me out,' he said with a self-deprecating chuckle.

'You got tired out, I _died_,' she said, shaking her head as she spread greased paper out on trays. 'Sit.'

He sat on one of the stools and watched as she scooped a quarter of the cookie dough (and that was still a huge amount) into a clean bowl and added peanut butter. 'Fitz is allergic to nuts, so I'll make a batch that he can eat, and a batch that everyone else can eat,' Skye explained, scooping half of what was left into another clean bowl and setting it in front of him.

'You knew that?' Ward asked, ashamed that he didn't know whether the others in the group had dietary requirements, or other allergies.

'I hacked everyone's personnel files,' Skye said, handing him a spoon.

'You know, it's not fair that you can find out about everyone else on this plane, but we don't know anything about you. All I know now is that you aren't allergic to peanuts.'

'Bees,' she said, scooping up cookie dough from one bowl and eating it raw. 'I'm allergic to bee stings. It's not too bad, but I swell up.'

He gave her a small smile. 'I'll remember that.'

'You're allergic to seafood,' she said, and then sipped milk.

'Guilty as charged,' he said. 'Almost died when I was a kid when my big brother decided to test it out and force-fed me a shrimp.'

Skye shook her head and ate more cookie dough. 'Your brother sucks.'

'You don't have to tell me that,' he said dryly before joining her in attacking the cookie dough. 'So are we just gonna eat the cookie dough, or is it gonna turn into cookies at some point?'

'You have a point,' Skye said. 'If left alone, I could eat the entire thing.'

'And I would be a very willing accomplice,' Ward agreed, grinning at her. 'All right, what do we do?'

'You've never made cookies before?' Skye asked, curious.

'Almost twenty years ago, sure,' he said, straight-faced.

She grinned at him before putting a bag of flour in front of him. 'Hands floured, or else you'll get dough stuck to you.'

He sighed before flouring his hands, moving the soft powder around. He watched as Skye did the same before picking up a small amount of dough, rolling it into a small ball, placing it on the tray and flattening it slightly. She repeated the action, and he quickly caught on, imitating her. Between the two of them rolling and eating the dough (the general measure was one for the oven, one for me) they soon had the cookies ready for the oven, and just in time for the muffins to come out.

'They're Coulson's favourite,' Skye said, easing them out of the tray and onto a rack to cool. 'Ow!'

Ward was up in a second, and by her side, examining the burnt finger. He tugged her to the sink, and stuck it under a cool stream of water. 'Keep it there,' he instructed firmly, before disappearing into one of the bathrooms. The two bathrooms on the ship had immediately been segregated into "girls" and "boys", and Ward, curiously enough, disappeared into the girls' one. He reappeared almost instantly with a first aid kit, and with a few quick, efficient movements, he had to finger anointed and wrapped.

'There,' he said.

She stared up at him, and they realised the close proximity that they were in. 'Thanks,' she breathed, and he quickly stepped out of her personal bubble.

'Um… here.' He reached up and brought down containers that could be used to put the newly baked goodies into, before sticking the cookies into the oven.

'Thanks,' she said again, and began to move again.

Absent-mindedly, he scratched his nose before grabbing a mug and filling it with coffee from the coffee pot that always seemed to be full. 'I'll take this into May. She's been flying for a while now, she'll need it.'

'Wait.' Skye grabbed a muffin, and bounced it from one hand to the other until she managed to retrieve a saucer, which received the still steaming muffin. 'She's probably hungry, too.'

'Uh, yeah.' He took the muffin and coffee and padded through the quiet plane. Coulson was sleeping, he could hear the gentle snores as he walked past, and Simmons and Fitz slept like logs once they drifted off. Ward envied them. He poked his head into the cockpit. 'Safe to enter?'

'Sure,' May said, turning to look at him through her dark aviators. 'Shouldn't you be asleep?'

'Couldn't sleep,' Ward said. 'Apparently, neither could Skye. There's a cake, and muffins, and cookies.'

'You brought me a muffin?' May asked, and the amusement was clear in her tone.

'You've been on the stick for five hours now. You want me to take over for a bit?' Ward asked.

'Nah,' May said, shaking her head and taking the coffee from him. 'This will keep me going until we get to the carrier. Plus, you two seem to be doing some SO-protégé bonding.'

Ward thought about this for a moment. 'Yeah, I guess we are.'

She took the muffin and broke a piece off to eat. 'Mmmm… good muffin. Ward, you do know that you've got flour on your nose, right?'

'Huh?' he asked intelligently. 'Oh, yeah, right, I, uh, scratched my nose. I was helping Skye with the cookies.'

She smiled inwardly. She rarely had outward displays of emotion… except for disapproval. That she couldn't hide.

'I didn't know you baked,' she said.

'I don't.' And with that he got up. 'You need anything? Bathroom break?'

'I'll let you know if I do,' she said calmly, and he knew a dismissal when he heard one.

He trooped back down to the living area, where Skye was happily icing the cake.

'Whatcha doing?' he asked, re-perching on his stool.

'Icing the cake. Can you tell what it is, yet?' she asked, and as he watched, a very familiar emblem formed.

'That's Captain America's shield,' Ward said, admiring the way she used different sorts of chocolate for the different colours on the shield.

'I read that A.C.'s a fan,' she said flippantly, but he could see that she really did care about it, with the effort that she was putting in. She finished, and put the cake in a container, which went next to the box of muffins.

A sudden question popped into Ward's mind, and he didn't have the thought to suppress it and stop his mouth from asking it. 'Are you happy here, Skye?'

Her head shot up from where she was peering at the baking cookies. 'What?'

'Are you…?' Ward trailed off, then coughed. 'Are you happy, with me- with SHIELD, I mean, on the team?'

She considered the question for a moment, pouring them each another glass of milk. 'Well, I've got Mom and Dad, and two squabbily little siblings… and I've got my overprotective big bro…' She nudged him in the ribs, smiling up at him. 'I'm really happy here, Grant.'

The oven dinged, but Skye didn't move.

'Um, the cookies,' he said quietly.

'Oh, right.' She slipped out of his arm, and skipped over to the oven, where she pulled out the trays without burning herself this time, although he noticed that she did favour the finger a little, stopping herself from putting too much pressure on it. She slid them onto racks and began to clean up.

Silently, he moved so that he ended up next to her, holding a towel. Together, she washed and he dried, and he almost laughed at the domesticity of it all. If they weren't careful, they'd be nagging each other about where the magazines for the guns were and who last cleaned the knives.

When he was growing up, he'd ached for the simplicity of this, and he was sure that she did too.

Absently, he held his hand out for the next item, only to have it hang in midair.

'No more, Ward,' Skye said, laughing at him slightly. 'Where's your head at?'

He shrugged. 'Just got lost in my thoughts for a second there.'

She paused before looking up at the clock. 'That clock has got to be wrong.'

He looked up as well. Almost five in the morning. 'Time flies,' he said quietly.

She yawned. 'Time for a bedtime snack, I think.'

'Or breakfast,' he suggested with an amused smirk.

She shook her head. 'Technically, we aren't "breaking our fast", so it can't be breakfast. Therefore, it's a bedtime snack.' She put cookies into separate containers, labelling the boxes with duct tape and a permanent pen so that when Fitz inevitably went to munch, he wouldn't end up requiring his Epi-pen.

'Well, it's definitely not a midnight snack,' Ward said dryly, watching as she poured glasses of milk and put cookies on a plate before deftly picking up everything and relocating to the living area, where she dropped with a sigh into the couch after depositing the food onto the table.

Slowly, he followed, sitting next to her but still a fair distance away.

She had no qualms about sitting next to him and slid over so that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, nibbling on cookies.

'What are we doing today?' she asked sleepily, draining her glass of milk.

'Well, they've actually got a range on the helicarrier, so I was thinking that you could actually try and fire the gun,' Ward said dryly. 'Without dropping the magazine.'

'I could… try,' she said, her sentence broken by a soft yawn.

'Trying… is good,' he said, stifling a contagious yawn.

'How hard could it be?' she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

'Harder than you think,' he replied, only to look down and find that she had drifted off to Dreamland.

A few minutes shut-eye wouldn't hurt him either. And he drifted off too.

::

Coulson hummed as he stepped out of his bunk, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves as he did so.

May passed by him holding a mug of coffee and something in her other hand that he couldn't see, probably one of the granola bars that she snacked on while on the stick.

'Sh,' she whispered with a small smile, as she passed him by. 'They're sleeping.'

Coulson watched in amazement as she passed him by – a smile, and an almost caring warning about members of the team? What had they done to soften up May to _that_ point?

Maybe Skye had added a splash of vodka to the coffee.

He smelled it before he saw it – the sweet, homey scent of baking that took him straight back to childhood, watching his mother put the cake in the oven before handing him the bowl to happily lick clean. The stacks of plastic containers on the bench were clearly filled to the brim with goodies, and labelled carefully; _Chocolate-Chip Cookies_ and _Peanut-Butter Chocolate-Chip Cookies – Fitz stay away_ scrawled on bits of tape that had been stuck to the sides of containers.

And then he saw them, Skye and Ward, both sporting patches of flour in hair, on faces, on clothes. Ward had flour on his nose and in his dark hair, and patches on his sweatpants and hoodie. Skye also had flour in her hair, as well as on her arms, clothes and on one ear. They weren't really sleeping _together_, more just on one another, Skye having leaned her head on Ward's shoulder, Ward slumped on the lounge with his feet up on the table, next to two empty glasses and a plate.

Fitzsimmons were sitting at the table, ridiculously quiet, especially for them, both munching on blueberry muffins and slurping at coffee. Simmons held a finger up to her lips and gave him the universal gesture for "be quiet", rather needlessly, as he had no intention of waking the two up.

'I guess they did this,' Coulson whispered, sitting next to Simmons who passed the muffins and the coffee pot.

'I guess so,' Simmons agreed.

'They even made cookies that I could eat,' Fitz said, looking at the carefully labelled containers.

'It's good that they remembered your nut allergy,' Coulson agreed. 'It's what a team does, look out for each other.'

'Those of you who are asleep should probably wake up,' May's voice said over the intercom.

Ward grumbled sleepily, 'Five more minutes.'

Coulson checked the screen which told them how far away they were from their location. 'Five more minutes and you'll have a rude awakening when we land.'

Ward nudged Skye off of his shoulder and stood up, and the _crack_ that his spine made when he stretched made Fitzsimmons and Coulson wince.

'That's not good,' Simmons commented.

'Meh,' Ward grunted, and sleepily walked to the coffee, while Skye slipped into the bathroom.

'You've got flour on your nose, Ward,' Fitz told him.

'Thanks,' Ward murmured, wiping his nose with the palm of his hand.

'And in your hair,' Simmons added helpfully.

'And on your clothing,' Coulson said.

Ward grumbled something that sounded like 'Gonna go change' and left them, coffee in hand.

'Morning.' Skye walked back out into the living area and helped herself to a muffin.

'Sleep well?' Simmons asked her.

'Not really,' Skye said. 'I wasn't very sleepy, so I started baking.'

'Everyone, time to strap in,' May said over the intercom. 'We're two minutes out from the carrier.'

Ward walked in with clean hair and skin, and buckled into a chair. Skye dropped into the chair next to him and fumbled with the buckle for a moment. She looked up at him and, unseen by the others, grinned and winked at him.

He just smiled back.

::

**I was craving peanut butter cookies. That is my only excuse for writing this, and the thought of Ward (OMG, he's ticklish, that's so adorable) covered in flour made me giggle.**

**I hope Ward wasn't too OOC – I just have this feeling that when he's not on duty (something that we haven't seen much of – he's either on duty or training Skye the majority of the time) he's a little more playful, like when he was playing poker with Fitz; he seemed amused at Fitz's attempts to intimidate him.**

**Review, please.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


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